Tanner's Virgin (3 page)

Meanwhile what?

Meanwhile I bathed and shaved and put on reasonably clean clothes and drank tea with milk and sugar and fried up some eggs and bacon and read part of a collection of the
Best Plays of 1954
(which were none too good) and stretched out on my back on the floor for twenty minutes of Yoga-style relaxation. This last involves flexing and relaxing muscle groups in turn, then blanking the mind through a variety of mental disciplines. The mind-blanking part of it was easier than usual this time because my mind was very nearly empty to begin with.

Then I read fifty pages of an early Eric Ambler novel, at which point I remembered how it ended. Then I picked up that morning's copy of the London
Times,
which I had already read once, which is generally enough. I had a go at the bridge and chess columns and the garden news, and then I turned to the Personals.
Halfway down the first column it occurred to me that I had a particular reason to check out the Personals, and halfway down the third column I found the reason.

“Of course it's Smythe-Carson again,” Nigel said the next morning. “Quite the same sort of message, isn't it? He's stopped mentioning the high pay and has——”

“And has abandoned Carradine in favor of Penzance,” Julia put in.

“And Smythe-Carson for something else, no doubt. And took new offices, but hasn't left Marylebone. I don't know just where Pelham Court is, Evan. Julia?”

I said, “I was there last night.”

“No one home, I don't suppose?”

“No. The building was locked.” I had guessed it would be, but I found the ad around 3:30 and had four hours to kill before Nigel and Julia would get up, and there are times when pointless activity is preferable to inactivity.

“So whatever he was doing before—”

“He's doing it again,” I said.

“I wonder what it is.”

I stood up. “Whatever it is, I'll find out soon enough. And I'll find out just what the hell happened to Phaedra, and—”

“How?”

I looked down at Julia. “Why, I'll ask him, I suppose.”

“But don't you suppose he's bent?” I looked puzzled. “I'm sorry, you people say crooked, don't you?”

“Oh.” Two countries, I thought, divided by a single language. “I'm certain he's working some sort of racket. Oh.” I nodded slowly. For the past few days I had operated on the vague assumption that Phaedra had gone on a tour or taken some form of legitimate employment, after which something went awry. Thus I had shown her photograph to travel agents and employment agencies and had inquired after her by both of her names, in the full expectation of getting an honest answer to an honest question. That line wouldn't work with Mr. Smythe-Carson.

“You might call the police,” Nigel suggested.

I thought it over. But if S-C was working a racket, or playing some version of foreign intrigue, it was more than possible that Phaedra was involved to a point where official attention might be a bad idea. Besides, I wasn't entirely certain how I stood with the police—they might turn out to be displeased with my presence in their country.

“I could go round if you'd like,” Nigel went on. “Pass myself off as an inspector from the Yard. I've played the bloody part often enough, and the moustache would go well with the role. Or do you think that would just put the wind up him?”

“It might.”

“Or I could disguise myself as female, under forty, unmarried. Somehow I don't think that would wash. You might do some sort of exploratory research, Evan.
Inquiring about the position on behalf of a female relative, that sort of thing. Give you the feel of the man—”

Julia said, “Of course you've both overlooked the obvious.”

We looked at her.

“You ought to send an unmarried female under forty to find out exactly what's going on. Fortunately I know just the girl. She's had a bit of acting experience, she's considered moderately attractive and intelligent, and she's bloody adventurous.” She stood up, a thin smile on her freshly scrubbed face, a light dancing in her eyes. “I hereby volunteer my services,” she said.

So of course we both told her that it was a ridiculous idea, not to say dangerous, not to mention foolhardy. We pointed out that she might compromise herself in any of a number of ways and added that we could not possibly let her risk herself in such a fashion.

And, of course, three hours later I was looking through a tea shop window on Pelham Court, waiting for her to return from the offices of Penzance Export just across the street.

 

“It does restore a girl's confidence,” she said. We were having lunch at a Lyon's Corner House a few blocks away from Penzance Export. “One regards oneself as utterly dependent upon the stray pence one ekes out playing chambermaids in bedroom farces, along with the meager income from a legacy and the generosity of one's brother. At nights I often comfort myself with the thought that I could always turn brass if times went bad, but who would have me?”

“I would.”

“Oh?” She arched her eyebrows prettily. “You'll be my first professional client, I promise you.” Her voice turned at once Cockney and sluttish. “Spare a couple of nicker for a short time, guv?” She laughed. “But I digress, don't I? Mr. Wyndham-Jones has hired me. He seems partial to hyphenated surnames. A low type, I'm afraid. Speaks straight Mayfair, but Whitechapel shines through in spite of all his hard work.”

“And he hired you.”

“He certainly did.” She grinned suddenly. “I wish you could have been there, Evan. I wish Nigel could have been there. Whenever I'm on stage and he's in the house I'm just dreadful, and this was the performance of my career. I did a Yorkshire accent”—she demonstrated this—“and I told him my old father had just died and I was quite alone in the world and new in London and I did so want to travel. I made myself the wide-eyed trusting sort, just a shade on the stupid side, but I tried to give the impression that I kept my own counsel and wouldn't be inclined to confide in anyone.” She sighed. “It worked. I shall be leaving the country at the end of the week for a three-month journey through the Middle East. All of my expenses will be paid and I will receive three hundred pounds at the termination of the trip.”

“The Middle East. Phaedra's card was from Baghdad.”

“Yes. The mission's a lovely one. Shall I tell you about it? Mr. Wyndham Hyphen Jones will be posing as the leader of an archaeological expedition to Turkey and Iraq. An archaeological tour, really. But in actual
point of fact, the six or seven girls accompanying him on this trek will not be his passengers but his employees. Or, more precisely, the employees of a we-cannot-mention-the-name mammoth oil company with interests in the area. It will be our vital task to Gather Important Information and Make Necessary Contacts. Isn't that divine?”

“More divine than plausible.”

“Quite. I don't suppose you've any idea what his real game is? He knows I've no money at all. I read thrillers, so all manner of horrid things have occurred to me, but nothing makes any sense.”

“Six or seven pretty but penniless girls. Maybe he's a sex fiend.”

“Just a fiend, I think. I can generally tell when a man responds to me that way. For example, you do, don't you?”

“Uh…”

“Why, you've gone tongue-tied! If it's a comfort, I react the same way to you. But Mr. Hyphen—I watched him study me and decide I was attractive without taking the slightest personal interest in the fact. He might enjoy slitting my throat, but I'm afraid that's the only way I could give him any pleasure.” She shivered, then grinned quickly. “Theatrical response indicating chills and palpitations. Mr. Hyphen strikes me as evil incarnate. Wait until you see him.”

“I can't wait.”

“Will tonight do? I've a date to meet him at his flat.”

“What!”

“Color me resourceful. I'd already told him I was
penniless, so I thought I'd press it a bit. I hit him up for a tenner on account. He allowed that he'd left his billfold in his other pair of trousers. Quite a transparent fellow—I don't believe he has another pair of trousers, let alone a spare ten quid. I'm to meet him at his flat at half past eight this evening. He'll have my ten pounds, along with an employment application for me to fill out.”

“You have the address?”

“Old Compton Street in Soho.”

“You're not going, of course.”

She rose. “Let's go back to the flat, Evan. I'm going to Old Compton Street tonight, but my damned brother's going to voice the same objections as you, and I'd as soon save time by arguing with both of you at once.”

 

The argument wasn't much of a contest. She had logic on her side, and when Nigel turned out to be easily won over I couldn't put up much of a fight. I'd planned on keeping the appointment for her, but there was really no reason to presume he would let me in. There was also the chance that he would have company, which would make the odds unfavorable for our side.

With Julia running interference for me, we hedged our bets neatly. She could signal to let me know that she was alone, and I could wait in the hallway, prepared to enter when he let her out. Nor would she be in any real danger; whatever his intentions, I'd be lying doggo in the hallway ready to kick the door in if she screamed.

Julia said, “But suppose he won't talk?”

We looked at her.

“He might not, you know. It would be rather like going to his office and waving pictures under his nose, wouldn't it?”

“Evan will have a gun, dear.” He turned to me. “I can pick you up one from the property department. It won't shoot, but I don't suppose you want to shoot anyone. I'll guarantee that it looks menacing.”

“But if he refuses to talk, then what?”

“Then Evan will make him talk, love.”

“Oh, come now. That's a line out of the movies. I could believe that of Mr. Hyphen, but Evan's not a brutal sort.” She put her hand on my arm. “Are you?”

I remembered a man named Kotacek, a Slovak Nazi, a doddering invalid who had not wanted to tell me where he kept his lists of the worldwide membership of the Neo-Nazi movement. It took a while, but he told me. I never behaved more inhumanly before or since, but then I'd never been faced with a more inhuman man.

“Brutal?” I said. “Everybody's brutal.”

“Oh, Evan, for God's sake! Everybody's brutal and each man kills the thing he loves and life is real and life is earnest. But you know what I mean.”

Nigel touched her shoulder. His guards' moustache fairly bristled. “You go too much by manner, love,” he said quietly. “Brutal to him who brutal thinks. I've a feeling your Mr. Hyphen will tell Evan anything he wants to know.”

O
ld Compton Street
is no place to stand around waiting for something. It's in that part of Soho that's a cross between Greenwich Village and Tijuana—narrow streets jammed with Italian restaurants and strip clubs and pornography shops and prostitutes. I stood in front of a grim pub just across the street from the building where our hyphenated friend lived. I'd already determined that his apartment was in the front of the building on either the third or fourth floor, depending upon whether you looked at it from an English or American point of view. You had to climb three flights of stairs to get to it, anyway.

An urgent little man in a houndstooth jacket buttonholed me and at once provided me with a good reason for standing on the sidewalk. I stood waiting for Julia's taxi while he ran through his catalog of vice. “Looking for a girl, are you now, mate? Soho's full of girls, but you got to find the right sort, you know. Nice clean girl, young, white, just started in the business not two months ago. It's no good if you get one what ain't clean, but this is a choice bit of brass, very young and pretty——”

I put my hands in my pockets. I had a gun in each
pocket and neither one could do much damage. The smaller one fired blanks, while the other, somewhat more realistic in appearance, was a single piece of cast iron. Nigel had offered me my choice and I'd taken both of them.

“Care to see a blue film, mate? Just five nicker for a full show. A Yank, aren't you? That's twelve of your dollars. Used to be fourteen, but you get a break with the devaluation. Bargain day, isn't it? There's a full hour of films, new ones, some in color. A man and a woman, two men and a woman, a man and two women, two women together, a woman and a dog, a woman and—”

A taxi drew to a stop in front of the building I was watching. Julia got out of it and passed some coins to the driver. She went into the building and the cab stayed where it was. If Hyphen was by himself she would signal the driver, tipping me in the process.

“Sell you any bloody thing you want. French postcards, French ticklers, Spanish fly. Drugs I don't handle, but I know them what does. See a live show? Not strippers, but me and a girl, fucking and sucking and all, and then you can have her yourself or not, your choice, and all it costs—”

A shade went up in the Hyphen apartment. I saw Julia wave to her driver, who, as it happened, had already driven off with another fare. Then she lowered the shade again.

“And hoping you won't take offense, mate, but to each his own as they say, and would you fancy a young boy? You don't look the sort, but I always ask, and—”

I tucked my chin into my coat collar, pitched my voice low, and changed my American accent for an
English one. “Special Branch,” I murmured. “We don't bother with touts and ponces as a rule, but unless you bugger off quick I might make an exception in your case.”

I kept my eyes on the ground as I said this, and when I looked up he was gone. I walked to the far corner, crossed the street, walked back to the doorway Julia had entered a few minutes earlier. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to me. I went inside. The foyer wall displayed half a dozen three-by-five file cards—Model, French Model, Spanish Model, with names and apartment numbers. I wondered what real models called themselves.

The apartments on the first two floors housed models exclusively. There were two apartments on the third floor, our friend's and one belonging to a model named Suzette. I suppose she had as much right to the name Suzette as he did to Wyndham-Jones. I put an ear to his door. I could hear voices, his and hers, but couldn't make out what they were saying. I stepped back, and the door of Suzette's apartment opened behind me and a man emerged. Suzette was close behind him, urging him to return soon. I turned to look at him, and he couldn't have been more anxious to avoid me if I had been his father-in-law the vicar. He plunged madly down the stairs. I turned to look at Suzette. Her bright red lips curled in a smile and she dropped one eyelid in a wink.

“Hope you weren't waiting long, love,” she said. “The time he took, I ought to charge him by the hour.” She had a little trouble with
h
's. “Now don't be a shy one. Come inside and we'll get acquainted.”

She was wearing a shiny wrapper the color of her lipstick, and she had so much pancake on her face that it was impossible to guess what she might look like without it. She couldn't have looked much worse.

“I'm waiting for a friend,” I said.

“Are you now?” Again the wink. “Come inside and we'll wait together.” She minced across the hallway at me. “Suzie'll show you a good time, ducks. You've no call to be bashful.”

I had the awful feeling that as soon as she got close enough she would make a grab at my fly. I reached into my inside pocket and came up with my U.S. passport, flipped it open, and flashed it at her.

“Cor,” she said. One hand flew to her throat. “I'm just a bleeding model, it's a respectable occupation—”

“Fifth Squad,” I said. I have no idea what that is, or if there is one. “I'm backing up my partner, he's upstairs. Might be wise of you to stay inside.”

Her eyes widened. “What's on?”

“Spies.”

“Russians?”

I shrugged.

“Bleeding Communists,” she said. She opened her door, ducked inside, then out again. “When you've done,” she said, “you might stop in for a cuppa.” Then she mercifully drew her door shut, and I put my passport away.

I stood there for another five minutes. At one point a midget passed me on his way downstairs. I tried not to guess where he had been or what he had been doing. Then I heard steps approaching Mr. Hyphen's door. I put both hands in my pockets, drew out both guns, and
decided on the one with the blanks. I stood close to the wall alongside the door.

There was the sound of the bolt being drawn. Then the knob turned, and he opened the door and held it for Julia. I walked in as she came out, digging the nose of the pistol into his middle.

“All right,” I said. “Back up now. Close the door, Julia. Now back off, friend, and turn around nice and slow, and keep your hands in the air.”

He backed off, and he put his hands in the air, but he didn't turn around. He was my height, eight or ten years younger, and many pounds heavier. I saw at once what Julia meant about his eyes. They were cold, opaque, utterly lacking in depth. In my part of New York boys with eyes like that are very good with knives.

Slowly, his hands came down again. “Not bloody likely,” he said. “You aren't about to shoot, are you, china?” Rhyming slang, I thought stupidly; china, china plate, mate. “Not a peeler, and there's not a pin here for stealing, so just who in bleeding hell are you?” He took a step toward me. “Better let me take that toy before you hurt yourself.”

So I pointed the gun at his gut and fired.

It didn't sound much like a truck backfiring. What it sounded like was a .38-caliber automatic. For an instant it must have felt like that, too, because he fell back as if shot and stared down in horror at the spot in his middle where the bullet would have gone had the gun contained one.

His face had just begun to register the fact that he hadn't been shot when I took the other fake pistol, the cast-iron one, and bounced it off the side of his head.

I turned to Julia. She stood motionless and open-mouthed, a bronze casting entitled “Astonishment.” “Get into the hall,” I said. “You want to know where the shot came from; it sounded as though it came from upstairs. Remember what a fine actress you are. Hurry!”

 

She did a good job. I locked the door behind her and listened to the hubbub outside while I got Mr. Hyphen properly trussed up. There was a substantial stuffed chair with molded wooden arms. I wrestled him into it and used a roll of picture-hanging wire to fasten him in place, his arms to the chair's arms, his feet to its legs, and the rest of him to the back and seat of it. I was in a hurry, and that sort of work isn't my favorite diversion anyway—I can't wrap a Christmas present properly, let alone a person. So I don't suppose I did the sort of job that would have left Houdini hamstrung, but that wasn't the idea. I just wanted this clown to stay in one place while I asked him questions.

Outside, the turmoil gradually peaked and died down. No police showed up, and the crowd was comprised chiefly of whores and clients, none of whom were too keen on interfering in anything. I heard Suzette say something about filthy bleeding Russians, but I don't think anyone paid very much attention to her. When it all died down, Julia knocked softly on the door and I let her in.

“There were blanks in the gun,” she said.

“You didn't know?”

“How would I have known? Lord, that was a wrench, wasn't it? Has my hair suddenly turned gray?”

“No.”

“That's remarkable. I think he's coming awake, Evan.”

He was indeed. His eyes went in turn to his bonds, to me, to Julia. He tried unsuccessfully to rock the chair. He looked at Julia again. “Effing little bitch,” he said. “I thought you were too bloody good to be true.”

I told Julia to take a taxi home. She told me not to be silly, that she was as anxious as I to hear what he had to say. I said that Nigel would worry about her, and she said that Nigel was at the theater.

“You may not enjoy this,” I said.

“Oh, but I will, Evan.”

What's-his-name looked up at me. “Evans, eh? And a good day to you, Mr. Evans.” He didn't sound much upset. “Wha'd you shoot me with?”

“A blank.”

“An effing blank.” He laughed. “That's a good one. I'll remember that one, I will.”

I pulled a card chair up and sat down in front of him. “You'll have to remember quite a few things. Your name, to start with.”

“Wyndham-Jones, Mr. Evans.”

“Not Smythe-Carson?”

“Who's he, Mr. Evans?”

I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I said, “There are some things you'll have to tell me. I'm not interested in you at all, just in your information. There was an American girl named Phaedra Harrow. You may have known her as Deborah Horowitz.” I showed him her picture. “I want to know where she is and what's happened to her.”

“Glad to oblige,” he said cheerfully. “Let's have an
other look at the picture.” His eyes narrowed in concentration. Then he smiled. “Don't know as I can help you, Mr. Evans. Never saw her before in me life, not the least bit familiar. Names don't ring a bell either, sorry to say.”

I let him have the gun butt on his left cheekbone. His head flew to the side. I heard Julia suck in her breath, but He Who Got Slapped didn't make a sound. The smile came back and the same flat cold light glinted in his eyes. He said, “Two or three hours, I'll have a ruddy great bruise there. All blue and purple it'll be.”

“The girl.”

“Still don't know her, Mr. Evans. Me memory's no better.”

I swung the gun backhand and caught him on the right cheekbone. I knew he'd ride with it, so I made it harder. “Now they'll match,” I said.

“Oh, I'll be the pretty one.”

“I can stand this longer than you can.”

“Oh, can you now?” His lips tightened and his voice turned harder. “You effing bastard, I've taken dumpings from professionals. You haven't the stuff to kill me, and you'd have to do that to learn the first bloody thing about your little American twist. I'll sit here and take it while you puke at the horror of it all.”

I hefted the gun. He didn't even wince. I stood up, turned to Julia. She was standing near the door and looked vulnerable. It was senseless. We had the son of a bitch tied up, and he was in control of the situation while Julia looked vulnerable and I felt impotent. I took a few deep breaths and concentrated on visions of a naked Phaedra being tortured and burned at the stake.
I was trying to work up some genuine fury, and it just didn't come off. That sort of reaction either happens or it doesn't. You can't think it into existence.

So to Julia I said, “You see the problem? You pinpointed it earlier. I'm just not the menacing type. I don't ooze brutality. I've got a bad image.”

“Evan—”

“Now if it was me in the chair and this clown asking the questions, he wouldn't have to lay a hand on me. One good glower from Hyphen here and I'd sing like a goddamned roomful of castrati.” I thought for a moment. “Go home,” I told her. “You don't want to see this.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“Go home. Now.”

She shook her head.

“Horrible image,” I mused. I left the room and wandered through the rest of the flat. I had wondered what sort of person would live in a whorehouse, and the other rooms answered the question for me. A whore lived there, and Hyphen had borrowed her place for the evening. There was female clothing in the closets, messy cosmetic tubes and jars and bottles scattered in the bedroom and bathroom. In the kitchen I fumbled through drawers until I found something that was a sort of cross between a regular knife and a meat cleaver. I think it's used for chopping up heads of lettuce.

I got a roll of adhesive tape from the bathroom cabinet and tore off eight or ten six-inch strips, fastening them together to make a square patch. I returned to the front room. He was as I had left him.

“Last chance,” I said. He told me what to do to myself, and I fastened the patch of tape over his mouth.

“What's that, Evan?”

“A gag. So he won't scream.”

I bent a loose end of picture wire back and forth until it frayed. The piece was long enough to wrap around the index finger of his right hand five times, and while I was doing that Julia asked me what it was.

“A tourniquet,” I said.

“What is it for?”

“So he won't bleed when I cut off his finger. Go in the other room, Julia. You don't have to go home if you don't want to, but please get the hell out of here.”